Irmtraut Sahmland and, Hans-Jürgen Schrader (eds), Medizin- und kulturgeschichtliche Konnexe des Pietismus: Heilkunst und Ethik, arkane Traditionen, Musik, Literatur und Sprache (Göttingen and Bristol, CT: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), pp. 428, €90, hardback, €74.99, e-book, ISBN: 978-3-525-55844-7.

the potential equality and convertibility of all people. Stornig’s analysis of the exposition material reveals that religious and secular knowledge were deeply connected. Catholic academics established their theory on ‘cultural circles’ (Kulturkreise) by merging both types of knowledge. Much of their argumentation was based on pictures of bodies, used to construct differences. Marcel Dreier underlines how interventions in bodily practices, childbirth and feeding in his case, were often motivated by issues of biopower and public health. Catholic Missionaries in rural Tanzania 1930–60 had an ambiguous position in this respect: they promoted a participative modernity for the whole world, but were then surprised when Africans claimed it. Furthermore, Dreier portrays the colony as a space of specific knowledge production: the protagonist-nurse of his chapter acquired all her expertise on midwifery on the spot, learning from local women. Some of the chapters raise additional issues, most notably on globalisation (of the body), entanglement (of diseases), or transnational networks for knowledge. However, these strands are not followed as logically as the points outlined above suggest. Generally, this collection of essays is exceptionally coherent in its methodologies, scope, content and quality. Nevertheless, some contributions seem more interesting for medical historians (Dreier, Hölzl), others for historians of Africa (Ratschiller, Wetjen), or for general historians working with photographs (Stornig, Ratschiller). Overall, the historian of colonial medicine receives illuminating insights into the role of missionaries in the production of knowledge on the body and beyond. Equally importantly, the reader gains valuable understanding about the role of biomedicine in the colonialists’ complex and shifting relations to and conceptions of African bodies.